I have been looking at the 10 inch Skywatcher Goto Dobsonian. Going by the reviews I have read, these new Goto Dobsonian have a half decent auto tracking to compensate for the Earths rotation. This staggered dobsonian mount goto tracking is okay for viewing and automatically locating 1000's of objects, but shit for taking photos (eg long exposure of deep space objects). The traditional mounts auto track smooth / far better for photography, but cost 2-3 times more.
A Barlow lens is totally worth it depending on the magnification calculation of your telescopes specs and the eyepieces you own. Here is a handy calculator:
http://www.davidpaulgreen.com/tec.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Remember that huge magnification may not be ideal for your 60mm aperture telescope. On the box, or specs, a telescope marketing material may claim to be capable of 600 x magnification, but thats hype.
More on that here. About 2 x the aperture mm for a rough idea of decent magnification limit. So 60mm is about 120 x magnification. You wouldnt want a Barlow to take it too far past that. So I'd definatly recomend saving up for Dobsonian for more aperture.
A great place to buy from is Andrews telescopes.
Shit website here, but their prices significantly craps all over the others. The Skywatcher 10 inch Go-To Dobsonian currently listed at $1399 and the same Skywatcher 10 inch Donsonian without Go-To is $899. At high magnification the rotation of the Earth is exagerated so you are going to want the Go-To version. This saves you constantly adjusting the telescope becuase what you are viewing moves out of frame / view every 30 seconds. Also makes things far far easier to locate. The 10 inch is the aperture sweet spot for me. If I was hardly ever going to move my telescope around, I would save a bit more and go the 12 inch or higher. 10 inch is still biggish to lug around, but doable and quick to set up so I am prepared to put up with that for the increased aperature over an 8 inch...
But at the moment I only have my 15 x 70 Binoculars - The family telescope my grandfather built is interstate so thats why I wanna get a new Dobsonian!
This morning (3.20am 24/07) Jupiter was near the Moon. I saw 2 of the 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter. Checking online confirmed that I saw Callisto and Europa. Ganymede was too close to Jupiter from Earths perspective for me to make out and Io was behind Jupiter.
Mobile phone camera full digital zoom - No Binoculars
I got some great Moon crater detail photos with my mobile phone and binoculars (considering no tripod, no moon filters, mobile phone camera lol -
But hey, I am taking photos of the craters on the moon with my mobile phone!).